Now That’s a Screed: Sullivan on The Mitt

Romney will run against a fictional Obama, and Fox will provide the cover, and unless Obama is able to change the frame of this debate, the relentless propaganda will be potent. Yes, the level of deception is so great it’s breath-taking. But Romney, I’m increasingly inclined to believe, is a businessman all the way down. His ethics are about getting, as he put it, 50.1 percent of the vote in any state. He does not believe there are any ethical or principled reasons not to try and get to that 50.1 percent however he can. A businessman can compartmentalize core moral and political questions into marketing. The goal is 50.1 percent saturation.

So he marketed a bunch of policies when running in Massachusetts – blithely becoming pro-choice out of deep conviction and personal experience, implementing Obamacare on a state level as a centrist conservative, being “more pro-gay than Ted Kennedy” on discrimination. But now he is not running in Massachusetts, he will simply change the policies. He favors a constitutional amendment criminalizing all abortion, total repeal of Obamacare, and will not stand by even a gay national security spoeksman if it means offending the religious right. This is who he “is”. If a line will work against Obama, he will use it, regardless of its truth. Because there is no truth in Romney’s world. There is only advertizing.

There is something increasingly chilling about this shape-shifter, isn’t there? He views himself as a product to be marketed to different audiences at different times. And the actual content of that product is completely malleable. It can change as swiftly as Mormon doctrine, when market share is at stake. To predict Romney, in other words, you simply have to merely examine the market he’s selling to.

As I noted once before, he doesn’t just believe that corporations are people; he is a walking corporation masquerading as a person.